Advance to Realize Ultra-Precision “Nuclear Clock” September 12, 16:52

The “nuclear clock” is considered to be “an error of one second in 300 billion years”. This is a big step toward practical application. Research groups such as Okayama University have announced that they have successfully developed the basic technology required for the practical application of the “Nuclear Clock”.

The “Nuclear Clock” measures the time by using the vibration of the nucleus, and is considered to be 1000 times more accurate than the “Atomic Clock”, which is regarded as “an error of 1 second in 300 million years”.

For practical application, it was an issue to develop a technology to bring nuclei into a specific energy state, but a research group such as Prof. Koji Yoshimura of Okayama University succeeded in this. Announced in the online version of the magazine "Nature".

The research group's technology is to put the X-rays on the isotopes of thorium atoms with a specific intensity to bring the nuclei into a specific energy state. This is the first time in the world that this method has succeeded.

If the “nuclear clock” is put into practical use in a major step, the GPS accuracy, which depends on the clock performance, will be greatly improved.

Prof. Yoshimura said, “I am happy with the research results ahead of the world. I would like to proceed with further research toward practical application.”